Intergovernmental cooperation and focus helped advance design practice around the world in 2025. Some of the world’s leading intellectual property (IP) offices came together for the 10th year of ID5 meetings, the Hague international design system turned 100, and the European Union started implementing its largest design reform in decades. Jurisdictions continued to focus on improving design protection for modern graphical user interface (GUI) designs and began to experiment with artificial intelligence (AI). Here’s our annual rundown of some of the more significant updates to affect design law and practice in 2025.
The ID5
The ID5 is a cooperative framework among five of the world’s major IP offices, focusing on industrial design protection. It aims to “promote and further the development of user-friendly, highly-efficient and interoperable industrial design protection systems.” Its members include the offices responsible for administering industrial design protection in China, the European Union, Japan, South Korea, and the United States.
In 2025, the ID5 initiated a new project to develop a user guide for digital design applications. This follows progress in several countries (e.g., Japan, Korea) in recent years to update or clarify their systems to better protect GUI designs. With the notable exception (so far) of the United States, the design protection systems in many significant markets have modernized to protect digital designs like GUIs in their own right, not as a subordinate portion of another product. The ID5’s effort here will be twofold: to collect the relevant regulations from its partner offices and to produce a guide for users to show how to effectively seek GUI design protection in compliance with the various requirements. China and the EU are co-leading this effort, and it may have been part of the impetus for China’s release on December 5 of its own updated guidelines for GUI applications, discussed in more detail in this article.
In 2025, the ID5 also initiated a study on the challenges for design systems posed by new technologies like AI and the metaverse. Its goal is to provide information and support that can help guide each ID5 office in accommodating and adapting to these challenges. This initiative was on full display at the ID5’s annual meeting this past October at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) in Alexandria, Virginia (in which your correspondent participated on behalf of the Intellectual Property Owner’s Association (IPO)). Hot topics relating to AI in the design world mirror those in the utility world but are likely to have different impacts. Two aspects that seem to be at the forefront of this ID5 initiative—which is being led by Japan—are the specter of AI inventorship in designs and the impact of AI-generated prior art on the novelty of designs.
Given that its membership includes the top IP offices in the world, the priorities of the ID5 can be a bellwether for global design development, and it is worth watching as these and other initiatives progress into 2026.
The Hague International Design System
The Hague International Design System turned 100 years old in 2025. The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) held a symposium to celebrate, at which Sterne Kessler’s own Tracy Durkin spoke about the development and future of the system. The Hague system’s growth from 11 founding signatories to its current 82 members covering 99 countries mirrors the growth of industrial design’s importance to the global economy. The Hague system helps protect the investment and innovation that drives this growth by providing uniform processes and a centralized way to obtain protection in multiple jurisdictions at once. What was once a small European-centric system now finds that filers from China, the United States, and South Korea are the heaviest users. Though Europe is still the most common jurisdiction that filers designate for protection, it is closely followed by the United States, China, and Japan.
In 2025, the Hague system gained two new members: Saudi Arabia and Uzbekistan. Looking ahead, jurisdictions such as Zimbabwe, Kazakhstan, the Philippines, Thailand, Peru, the Eurasian Patent Organization (EAPO), and South Africa are expected to join in the coming years.
For further reading about the Hague system’s development and impact on global design law harmonization, follow this link: Growth, Harmonization in Focus as Hague System Turns 100.
European Union
In 2025, the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) was busy implementing design reform legislation that was adopted in late 2024. The first phase began in May. Among other changes, it enacted significant provisions that bolstered the standing of GUI designs by confirming that they can be protected as a “product” under the law and by explicitly encompassing animation as an aspect of a protectable design. This continues a global trend toward treating GUI designs as protectable in their own right, not necessarily tied to a display screen or other device.
On the other hand, the new changes diminished the protection available for certain categories of products, under the so-called repair clause. Going forward, design protection will no longer apply to component parts of a complex product that are used to restore its original appearance for repair purposes. This does not necessarily outright preclude design protection for component parts—for example, a registration may still apply against infringers that are not using the product for repair purposes—but it creates a significant gap in the value of design protection for such components.
The design reforms eliminated the requirement that all designs in a multi-design application be categorized in the same Locarno class, providing greater flexibility and value to applicants. It even updated the terminology of EU designs. No longer is design registration known as a Registered Community Design (RCD)—it has been rebranded as a European Union Design (EUD).
Phase two of the reform legislation implementation will take place in 2026, with secondary legislation expected by July to remove the current seven-view limit on drawing representations. This is a welcome change that will improve the usefulness of the EU’s already well-regarded design protection system.
United States
In last year’s review, we noted that the United States continued to lag behind other significant jurisdictions in how it protects GUI designs and asked if 2025 would be the year that the USPTO began to catch up. Unfortunately, it was not. The USPTO had received comments from the public in 2024 encouraging it to modernize examination guidelines to acknowledge digital designs as eligible for design patent protection regardless of a display screen, like in the EU. But the USPTO took no action and sent no signal to the public about whether this issue remains a priority to the USPTO, as it does to its stakeholders.
The USPTO did, however, take steps toward modernizing its design examination process. It launched DesignVision, an AI-powered image search tool for examiners. This tool is incorporated into design examiners’ workflows and can use images of the claimed design as input to search industrial design collections of the United States and other countries. The tool was launched in late 2025, so its full effects have yet to be felt by applicants. It is possible that it will help examiners find better prior art and make stronger novelty and obviousness rejections. Though this may increase the cost and complexity of design prosecution, it has the potential to lead to more robust design patents if the tool truly helps examiners identify the best prior art for evaluating the merits of a claimed design.
China
As mentioned earlier, in December 2025, China released updated guidelines for GUI design applications. The guidelines explain what makes a GUI design protectable: It must be displayed on or linked to a product and relate to human-computer interaction. Game interfaces are specifically excluded from protection. The guidelines provide examples of designs that are and are not protectable. For example, background wallpaper, boot screens, or certain screen layouts are not protectable because they are considered unrelated to user interaction. A stand-alone icon may be unprotectable if it does not have any evident context or connection to a product.
These new guidelines suggest that China’s GUI protection will develop somewhat differently from the EU’s, which appears more expansive and flexible, and in which the GUI itself can be considered a product. But the guidelines are new, and it remains to be seen how they will be applied both by applicants and by examiners as 2026 progresses. In any event, it can be taken as a positive sign that China is expending the time and effort to develop clear standards that try to address the needs of its stakeholders in the GUI area.
Canada, Qatar, the United Kingdom, and Australia
In 2025, Canada began accepting applications for designs directed toward buildings and structures, much like Japan did in 2020. And Qatar launched its new design registration system, featuring a 12-month grace period and plans for fairly rapid examination and registration.
Looking ahead, the United Kingdom appears set to modernize its design framework. In late 2025, it completed a consultation seeking public input on a variety of design topics, including clarifying deferment of publication provisions and improving protection for GUI designs and animated designs, among other things. Australia also continues work on its design reforms, which include a focus on improving protection for GUI and virtual designs.
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All told, 2025 was another year of growth and change for industrial design systems around the world. On-going work to advance protection for modern designs in the digital, virtual, and GUI space continued and promises to make 2026 another eventful year. The world of design continued to grow closer, with the ID5’s leadership and the growth of the Hague system. As 2024’s Design Law Treaty moves toward ratification, this harmonization is expected to continue in 2026. There will also be challenges. A hot topic on many people’s minds at design gatherings and meetings throughout 2025 was how AI will affect design protection. Can creation of a protectable design be assisted by AI? Or entirely created by AI? Should AI-generated designs be protectable or considered valid as prior art? These and more questions will at least be pondered, if not answered, in 2026.
This article appeared in the 2025 Design Patents: Analysis & Trends Year in Review report.
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